


calefaction

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Complicated Relationships, Force-Sensitive Finn, Handwave-y Time Travel Shenanigans, Introspection, Jedi Finn, M/M, Time Travel, complicated feelings, unrequited feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-08-31 10:18:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8574502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: Fighting the urge to sigh, he sized up his would-be rescuer. His first impression was that the kid was just as earnest as he’d seemed from afar, which was—impressive. His second was the kid was all but blinding in the Force, kind in a way Finn still wasn’t used to, and caring, and every bit as Force-sensitive as Finn. No, more so. Almost as powerfully sensitive as Luke if Finn didn’t know any better. His third? The rather inconvenient fact that he was cute.Put that thought away, Finn. You don’t have time for this.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silveronthetree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveronthetree/gifts).



_Am I dead,_ Finn thought, his brain and body seared by dry heat, face mashed into rough, irritating, obnoxious, hated sand. _This is what being dead feels like. I’m dead. I can’t believe—_

Of course hell is a desert. Because why not? Why wouldn’t hell be a desert?

The last thing he remembered, he was with Master Luke and Rey and Kylo Ren and—and Luke had said something about being sorry? And then he’d been Force pushed out of the way? Of a… he groaned, spitting dryly, grit filling his mouth, his nose, his _ears_. _Kriff. Deserts. Seriously_. “Luke?” he called, blinking, sunlight all but blinding him as he looked up and around and—he was definitely dead. They hadn’t been anywhere _near_ a desert before. If he was here, he’d been shot or—

“Oh, hell no,” he said. _I’m going to haunt Ren until the end of time,_ he thought, not a little crazed, as he jumped to his feet, dusting himself off. His tunic clung to his spine, stuck to his body with sweat. Which, that just wasn’t _fair_. Why the hell would a ghost sweat? He looked down at his hands. Solid. And not blue. Weren’t ghosts blue? Wasn’t that what Luke told him?

“Hey!” a voice called. Finn spun around to see some young, almost painfully young, blond guy running across the hard, packed sand toward him. “Hey, there!”

“Hey, there,” Finn muttered in a high-pitched mockery of the kid’s earnest tone. Still muttering, he continued, “What in the hell are you doing _running_ in this heat?” He threw up his hands in a wave and yelled back. “You mind not running?” _Not really looking forward to hauling your ass all over the place when you faint_. “I’m okay!”

Finn knew enough about the Force to know why he knew the kid would want to hear that, the sheets of concern sloughing off the guy completely obvious even without too much effort on Finn’s part. And though the kid slowed to a jog, Finn wasn’t satisfied. He really didn’t want to be responsible for someone dying on him because they cared so much about his well-being. And jogging was still way more of a workout than Finn was comfortable witnessing at the moment.

That was to say—well, it was _nice_ , but inconvenient. And Finn wasn’t exactly looking to be charmed by a guy willing to run around in sand and searing sunlight. What planet needed two suns anyway? Two. Wasn’t one enough?

 _At least it’s not Jakku_ , he supposed, willing for a moment to indulge the more optimistic corner of his mind before laughing at himself for it. The fact that it did make him feel better was neither here nor there. Lots of places weren’t Jakku. Didn’t make them _better_.

By the time the kid reached him, Finn had had enough time to acclimate himself to the situation—or as much time as he was gonna get, which had to be good enough if he wanted to figure out how to get _back_. So he had somehow transported to a desert… and a desert on another planet because he sure as hell wouldn’t have missed two suns even in the middle of confronting Ren. And he probably wasn’t dead. So. He’d figure it out. He always did.

Fighting the urge to sigh, he sized up his would-be rescuer. His first impression was that the kid was just as earnest as he’d seemed from afar, which was—impressive. His second was the kid was all but blinding in the Force, kind in a way Finn still wasn’t used to, and caring, and every bit as Force-sensitive as Finn. No, more so. Almost as powerfully sensitive as Luke if Finn didn’t know any better. His third? The rather inconvenient fact that he was _cute_.

 _Put that thought away, Finn. You don’t have time for this_.

“What are you doing out here?” the kid asked, shielding his eyes from the glare, his mouth screwed up in a thoughtful grimace.

 _Losing my damned mind_. “I—” Finn wasn’t exactly a stellar liar still and his mind blanked. “I’m looking for Luke Skywalker.” Wincing immediately, he mentally cursed himself out. Give him a blaster and he’d find and down a target for you in seconds. Ask him to come up with a cover story and he had nothing.

“Well,” the kid said, having the good, Force-damned sense to look weirded out finally. But then he shrugged and tapped his thumb against his chest and tilted Finn’s entire world on its axis. And considering how his day was going already, that was quite the accomplishment. “You found him.”

Oh.

Oh no.

No, no, no.

This had to be some kind of mistake. Skywalker was a common name, right? There had to be Skywalkers crawling all over the galaxy—there weren’t really, and Finn knew that, but he really, really wanted to pretend otherwise at the moment, thank you—Finn just hadn’t met any of them yet. Or heard Luke, the real Luke, speak about them.

Finn dragged his hand across his face. Tired, he asked, “Where am I?” He had a sneaking suspicion that he knew exactly where he was.

“The Jundland Wastes,” the kid—Finn could not admit it was Luke—said. Brows furrowing, he elaborated, though to no real avail. “The salt flats?”

“Tatooine, right?” Finn’s stomach turned as he verbalized his guess.

“C’mon.” The kid grabbed him by the arm and Finn decided not to shrug him off. He did feel a little lightheaded. Not because of the temperature, maybe, but still. “Let’s get you out of this heat. If you don’t know where you are, you’ve been out here too long.”

 _No kidding_.

“What’s your name?” Lu—Luke, _Luke_ asked. Holy _shit_ , Luke Skywalker. _And he’s_ cute, a small, unhelpful corner of his brain reminded him.

“Finn,” he answered. Only belatedly he wondered whether maybe he shouldn’t have said anything. If this really was Luke Skywalker, will he remember this when Finn gets back to his own time? Nobody ever told him this could be a thing.

Maybe, hopefully, it wasn’t a thing. Maybe Finn was just… knocked out. This was a dream. He wasn’t dead; he just wasn’t awake. This was fine.

“Finn,” Luke replied, unaware of Finn’s turmoil, which was for the best. “Good to meet you.”

At the same time, it _felt_ real.

_What if he was stuck?_

_Don’t think about that_.

So, distracting himself, he focused on Luke himself, on the back of his head as they trudged toward—wherever Luke was taking him. He didn’t ask at this point, the words sticking in his throat and not just because of the dryness in the air.

Finn still couldn’t believe it was him, even though they looked remarkably alike. Now that he thought about it anyway. Their eyes—their eyes were uncannily similar, the color anyway, if not the… vibe they gave off. The Luke Finn knew always had a cautious look in his eyes. This one didn’t. Their mouths, too, were the same except this one’s mouth didn’t carry that troubled slant the older Luke’s did. But it was their Force signatures that truly intrigued Finn, the way this Luke’s was so like the signature of the one he knew.

And so, so different, too.

It was like a shroud had been pulled away to reveal an incandescent _goodness_ that Finn couldn’t imagine being shuttered—though by the time they’d met, it had. The Luke Finn knew… if he didn’t ache for that Luke before because of what happened, he would now. Because he’d known it had been bad. You just had to _look_ at Luke to know it was bad, let alone feel it through the Force. But seeing what Luke had been before—assuming, again, this was _real_ —drove the point home in a true, visceral way.

At least now Finn knew why, though he could have guessed before, he supposed. If this is who Luke had been at one point in his life, it must have been devastating. To the point where even now, Luke hadn’t entirely explained what happened when Ren turned. But even still it clung to him, a dampening, dark cape that obscured so much more than it revealed. Though sometimes, sometimes a little of _this_ Luke shone through, when Finn or Rey completed a task set for them in a surprising way, when Poe told a silly joke and startled a laugh out of him, when C-3PO tittered on and on about some minor thing only he and Luke cared about, when General Organa ribbed him about the state of his beard.

Finn, irrationally perhaps, found himself wanting to remind his Luke of _this_ one. A foolish notion, he knew, but it had been foolish to bust Poe out of lock up on the _Finalizer_. It had been foolish to take up with the Resistance afterward, knowing what he was. It had been foolish to start training as a Jedi at all knowing something of what had happened the last time Luke had tried to train a Jedi and knowing the skills he’d already perfected could do a whole hell of a lot of good in the ground conflicts that had started springing up with increasing, frightening frequency.

Frankly, he’d done a lot of foolish things in his life.

But, he reminded himself, every last one of those foolish things had been worth it, had been fulfilling in a way Finn never thought to expect for himself.

And probably none of them were anywhere near as foolish as the one thing he hadn’t admitted to himself: he cared about the man Luke became, enough that he wanted him to be happy. And seeing the template on which that happiness could be reshaped and reformed, it made Finn want to act. Nothing concrete could come of it, he knew, but that hardly mattered. If he could show Luke that all wasn’t lost…

Everyone deserved hope.

“Hey, Luke?” Finn said.

“Yeah?” Luke answered, distracted. “You doing okay? We’re almost there. It’s just thatawa—”

“Luke?”

And this time, something about his tone made Luke stop and turn and peer at him with an uncanny expression on his face, something Finn couldn’t quite parse, but made his stomach twist anyway. “What is it?”

Finn didn’t know how he knew that this was the time to say something, but know he did and speak he could. “You’re a good man,” he started, though man might have been a stretch. He was eighteen, nineteen maybe. And though Finn wasn’t that much older than that, he certainly _felt_ ancient looking at the Luke standing in front of him. “Remember that, will you?”

“Okay,” Luke said, dubious, nodding quickly. He probably regretted ever thinking to help a guy he found wandering in the desert and Finn couldn’t blame him. “Sure. I can do that.”

Those few words didn’t feel like much, but they contented Finn anyway and Luke seemed to treat them with more seriousness than they probably deserved. Which… was just like Luke really. He would do that.

“Okay. Good. That’s good,” Finn said, relieved, hardly noticing the shimmering quality of the air around him at first, like a sudden heatwave had—

He woke up freezing, though the ground was softer than he’d have expected and blessedly free of sand and there was a hand on his chest and below his neck and as he struggled upright—again, was that all he planned on doing today? He felt the soothing touch of the Force against his skin, a headache he hadn’t had time to realize he felt easing behind his eyes.

“Are you all right?” Luke asked— _his_ Luke.

It all came back to him, in sharp, painful detail. The fight. Kylo Ren. “Where’s Rey?” he asked, pushing himself to a seated position, though it required him struggling against Luke’s touch.

“She’s fine.” He jerked his head in the direction of their ship, visible in the distance. “Went to report back to Leia.”

Finn studied Luke’s face and found no deception there. “What happened? Are you okay?” He looked around. “What happened to Ren?” he asked, blunt, tone flat.

“Gone,” Luke said. “And I’m fine. As for you, I’m not sure what happened.” He smiled then, but the quality of it was different than any of the smiles Finn had seen him wear before. Finn couldn’t pinpoint why, and he couldn’t continue to ponder it as it dropped from Luke’s face almost immediately. “But thank you.”

Finn didn’t have to ask what he meant. “You—you _remember_ that? But how?” _It only just happened! But—not for you._ “Why didn’t you say something before?”

“The Force is a mystery.” He shrugged and scratched at his beard, drawing Finn’s attention to just how close they still were. “I’ve sometimes found the best way to find the answer is to not ask too many questions. And to not _answer_ too many of them either.”

Finn, infinitely wise, chose to scoot away slightly, as surreptitiously as he could, covering the movement with a stretch. “But—”

“It helped,” Luke said, climbing to his feet and holding out his hand for Finn to take. “Knowing. Remembering. It helped. _Thank you_.”

“I—” This time, instead of feeling like talking was the right thing to do, he closed his mouth, letting silence fill the space of every word he wanted to speak. There would be plenty of time for talk later, for action, for… whatever this was. “Okay. I’m glad you’re okay.”

Luke’s eyes flashed with warmth. “Likewise, Finn.”

That only made him determined to draw out more of the smiles Finn knew still lurked somewhere inside of Luke. But even if he never brought one out in Luke again, he’d keep trying anyway.

That was a promise he could make to himself and Luke both.


End file.
